Video 12:19
Caper Capers

Prue AdamsUpdated
Sun Mar 28 15:52:00 EST 2010

Four years ago Landline featured a story about a young couple in South Australia who were sowing the seeds of an Australian caper industry. The story kicked off a lot of interest among Landline viewers and there's now a few new farmers trying their hand at growing these tiny, tasty flower buds. Prue Adams has been back to check on this budding little industry.

Transcript

ANNE KRUGER, PRESENTER: Four years ago, we featured a story about a young couple in South Australia who were sowing the seeds of an Australian caper industry.

Well, that story kicked off a lot of interest among Landline viewers and there is now a few new farmers trying their hand at growing these tiny tasty flower buds.

Prue Adams has been back to check on this budding little industry.

PRUE ADAMS, REPORTER: Morning has just broken over the Murray River at Mannum in South Australia. And a little way up the road, I'm about to be treated to a gourmet breakfast.

JONATHAN TREWARTHA, THE AUSTRALIAN CAPER CO.: This is breakfast so what we've got is capers with extra virgin olive oil with mushrooms. Capers on the griller so they're caramelised. And we've got the eggs and the caper berries.

PRUE ADAMS: Good. Tuck in! How many recipes do you have for capers these days?

JONATHAN TREWARTHA: We've got quite a few now. It's been 12 years of collecting caper recipes but we put it on the web site and so many people actually give me recipes. I've just had a recipe for candy capers believe it or not.

REPORTER: Capers. They're tiny and tasty and they account for millions of dollars worth of imports each year.

PRUE ADAMS: Landline first met Jonathon and Samantha Trewartha four years ago when they were getting their fledgling business off the ground.

PRUE ADAMS: With a marriage break-up behind him Jonathon is now flying solo but still just as keen to market this ancient drought hardy plant.

JONATHAN TREWARTHA: In the four years we've been able to grow capers in Australia we've done our market research so we now know the market segment and the size of the market which is about...it's actually only about 20 hectares.

So it's quite a small market, but it's the premium end, and it's worth doing.

PRUE ADAMS: Capers are an unusual plant, in that you basically get three bites at the berry. There's the little bud, which is the caper.

But if you allow it to open up into a flower, then you can eat the flower, or you can wait until the stamen pops up through the middle of the flower and that becomes the caper berry which is also edible.

The buds are best picked small and tight. They're worth more and the flavour is more intense. The berries, later brined, are attracting a lot of interest too. Each plant can produce around three kilograms of buds and berries over the hot summer months.

This is Jonathon Trewartha's own small plot on the banks of the Murray. He has employed horticulture students from Adelaide's Imperial College of Trades to help with the arduous and labour intensive harvest.

HARPREET SINGH, IMPERIAL SCHOOL OF TRADES: They learn from propagation and production, everything, and handling of the food.

PRUE ADAMS: So would they have handled capers before?

HARPREET SINGH: No, no, this is the first time but they are coming here for the last four or five months so this is a different and good experience.

PRUE ADAMS: The man who kick started this country's first commercial capers enterprise has no grand illusions as to how big this industry should become.

As still the biggest player he sees local product placed only at the top end of the current caper market.

JONATHAN TREWARTHA: We can't compete against Morocco and Tunisia for price. So effectively, you're looking at the premium market which is generally about the 10, 15 per cent.

And out of that 10, 15 per cent, we can only penetrate probably 20, 30 per cent of that premium market. So that's why it's only about 15 to 20 hectares.

PRUE ADAMS: Just across the river it's all go as another couple of farmers decide to branch out into capers.

Phil Caldicott is laying out irrigation so he can start planting around three hectares in the coming days.

His neighbours, Travis and Kelly Gladigau, are starting to put their plants in the ground today.

TRAVIS GLADIGAU, CAPER GROWER: I actually saw Jonathon's and your story on Landline and he was looking for growers and from there, we looked at his web site and we had to do something because the lack of water allocations out in the river.

Just take the caper. Bang it. Turn it upside down. Just ease up the roots a little bit. Cover it. And create a little well around it. Put the tree guards on. And then it's ready for water.

PRUE ADAMS: 2,500 caper plants will be planted in this sandy soil over the next few days.

After trialling several varieties, Jonathon Trewartha has settled on three for their lack of prickle and fruiting times. It's all family hands on deck, the same hands that will start picking capers later this year.

TRAVIS GLADIGAU: With the price of commodities these days you gotta either get big or diversify and try and make a little bit of money wherever you can.

That's the way things are heading. You either get big or get out or try and make an extra buck somewhere else.

JONATHAN TREWARTHA: I actually lease the plants to them and it's a grower harvest contract. And so they basically provide the product to me at a certain standard and then I process it and then distribute it round Australia.

PRUE ADAMS: The going rate for the Gladigaus' harvest is around $30 a kilogram so each hectare can fetch a tidy $10,000. It won't make them rich but with three hectares it's not bad pin money.

KELLY GLADIGAU, CAPER GROWER: With the drought and not having the water allocation you have to source the income off the farm so this has been one thing now that's brought us back to the farm.

PRUE ADAMS: If the Gladigau's want to see how their crop may look in a couple of years' time, they could take a trip a long way up the Murray and inland to Hillston In New South Wales.

Here, Leon Cashmere and his family have been growing capers for three years, a move prompted by that initial Landline story.

They bought their plants from Jonathon Trewartha and in a neat closing of the loop sell him back the end product.

PRUE ADAMS: This has been a fat lamb property. But the Cashmeres have also dabbled in lucerne and grain. Capers were something completely different.

LEON CASHMERE: Yes, they're extremely good in drought prone areas. Out here in Hillston, virtually central New South Wales, we only get an average rainfall of 14 inches, so they're a Mediterranean plant which seems to suit this area, and they're going very, very well.

PRUE ADAMS: On the day Landline visited, the harvest was halted by a blanketing dust storm, followed by an out of character drenching rain.

Straight after, it was back to picking. But the storm really knocked the crop around, cutting production by more than half.

While capers are considered to be tough and tolerant, they don't like wet feet, hail or frost. And they are vulnerable to some pests, particularly the cabbage moth. In its caterpillar phase, it will strip a plant in a matter of days. They need pruning in winter, too.

Leon Cashmere laughs. He just about knows every plant in this plot by name.

LEON CASHMERE: I've found it very labour intensive although in saying that it's enjoyable, you can see what you're doing, and yeah, there's a lot of work involved.

PRUE ADAMS: Just as the newer growers will, Leon Cashmere and his father do some preliminary processing. The fresh cleaned buds are mixed with salt and left to cure in barrels for around six weeks.

FATHER CASHMERE: Beautiful, aren't they? Nice and fresh. Looking good this year aren't they?

PRUE ADAMS: It's this process which draws out the bitterness from the caper bud. The fresh bud without salting is barely edible. It's this salted product which is then sold to Jonathon Trewartha at an agreed price per kilo.

LEON CASHMERE: Let's get out of here and get some more.

On an average our plants should produce approximately $75 per plant this year. And in saying that, that $75 is over a picking season of four to maybe five months depending on the weather conditions.

PRUE ADAMS: The qualified mining engineer who started this budding business says for individuals to make money from capers, they either need to value add doing dips and sauces and the like and sell them directly to farmers' markets or get involved with a grower to end user chain like his own.

JONATHAN TREWARTHA: If you're just a grower and you sell it through a traditional wholesale market, the effort is not worth it. They are all hand picked, and a wholesaler will say, "Well, I can sell the imported product or the expensive product", so that doesn't work.

The way I've set it up is that the growers are close to the consumer so effectively the grower grows it, we process it and it goes straight to the consumer and we're all along a chain.

That's the only way you can do it. Everyone has to get rewarded for quality 'cause that's how we're going to compete both in the Australian market and when we export.

PRUE ADAMS: And yes, export is one option. But considering it's taken more than a decade to get just 15 hectares in the ground, branching out overseas could still be a long way down the track.

JONATHAN TREWARTHA: It's been 12 years. I would've thought that I would've been a bit further along the line.

But then looking back I can understand that it's introducing a new crop, it's introducing people, it's finding a team, building that up. These things don't happen overnight.